


Broken Glasses

by Maulindath



Series: Pieces of Panem [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Implied Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket, Implied/Referenced Torture, Somewhat, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 06:14:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16550480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maulindath/pseuds/Maulindath
Summary: "Escort school teaches Euphemia to smile no matter what."There are many lessons Effie has learned over the years. This is just one of them.Or: Effie, over the years. From innocent child to survivor.





	Broken Glasses

**Author's Note:**

> I've rewatched The Hunger Games this weekend, and it turns that I have a lot of thoughts about Effie. I know that she ends up in Thirteen in the movies, but there is this gap in the books there she is simply forgotten and it got me thinking. Add to it that she is one of my favorite characters in the series, that I've read a LOT of Effie-centric fics these last few days and that I have many thoughts and theories about the Capitol, and, well... I ended up writing this instead of working on my actual fic (which is not even Hunger Games-based, go figure !).
> 
> Fair warning: it gets dark. But then, it's the Hunger Games. 
> 
> I apologize for any mistakes I might have made in my writing, as I'm not a native speaker of english, and hope you'll enjoy the read !

The Capitol teaches Effie that appearances are everything. It's expected, there, that she spend hours in her bathroom even at the age of five, that she learns to read using fashion magazines and beauty tips. She is a woman of the Capitol, and much like every Capitol citizen (much like any woman in the Capitol, there is some leniency shown to men that will never be shown to her), she is meant to be perfection, always. To be beautiful above all else.

School teaches her the basics - how the Games came to be, what role the Districts fulfill, how this is all just and necessary and altogether beautiful, for they all depend on each other, and is that not admirable ? - and the necessary - how to tell a good wig from a bad one, how to alter clothes, how to determine which colors suit you best - as well as the futile - how to read, how to count, how to eat and never gain weight. Beauty is at the core of everything : fashion, make-up, art, jewellry making, architecture. 

Euphemia loves the last, despite having no natural talent for it. Organisation and fashion come much more easily to her, and already she is considered for fashion school. She begs her parents to allow her one year of studying architecture, beforehand. It does not teach her how to create beautiful Arenas the way she hoped to, and she has to admit that she likes being seen as a brilliant student and shoe-in for a modeling career. Plus, the Phlox purple of Fashion School suits her complexion much better that the Robin's egg of the Architectural College.

(Effie doesn't know it yet, but it is the first lesson she teaches herself: To be persistent.)

Escort school teaches Euphemia to smile no matter what. It is their job. The Districts think them heartless, empty-headed and vapid, and they are, in a way. They have been selected for their beauty and manners, not for their empathy. Compassion is never fashionable, in the Capitol. It is a weakness, and weakness is ugly. Weakness is what turns people into Avox. They refine the art of masks instead, of being polite and immovable in the face of difficult mentors, of learning how to best flatter either a man or a woman for a sponsorship, how to prepare the Tributes for the cameras and the Games. 

Euphemia, now Effie, takes to it like a duck with water. She's always loved fashion, she's always had a talent for creating perfectly color-coded timetables, her mother has instilled in her impeccable manners, she is a peppy force of nature by birth. And she loves the Games. She loves the shine and the glitter of it, the frail, hungry children whose cheeks plump up in the weeks leading up to the Bloodbath, the stories that play on the screen like those dark, moving books that are not exactly accepted by the governement but not such a controversial read that they are truly bad. They give her such a sense of thrill in between Games !

But then, there are the less fun parts of being an Escort to learn as well. How to deal with the Gamekeepers when they don't believe your Tributes have any potential, how to deal with preparing the bodies and the funeral arrangements, how to always be in control of yourself. There is no place for weakness or emotion in an Escort.

(What Effie learns instead: to bury everything she might think deep, deep within herself, and present a perfect façade to the world, always.)

The actual Games teach Effie how fragile these children actually are. She has been given District Twelve, with its drunk of a mentor and its dull, grey people, and she is unsure about them. She has seen Haymitch Abernathy's games, of course - they are, in fact, the first Games she truly remembers, and she still feels the phantom pain she felt that day, when the Twelve girl died. It would have been so romantic, if they had been the last ones standing, both Twelve and beautiful, but it was not to be. At least he had avenged her, and that had been just as thrilling.

The first year, she is excited. She is here, finally, taking part in these Games she loves so much, and she is so happy that the grim faces in the crowd fail to phase her. Their tributes (her first Tributes ! How exciting !) are dark faced and skinny, with big grey eyes and sunken cheeks. They are both fourteen, cousins, and so very scared, and Effie smiles to see them eat with so much gusto despite her revulsion at their utter lack of manners. That will have to be the first thing she teaches them, she decides, they will never get a sponsor looking like street urchins the way they do !

They never have a chance to get a sponsor. The girl (Mar, the boy was Sal, they were cousins, and fourteen, and they both loved hot chocolate and loathed orange juice and she never managed to teach them how to properly butter bread) is too twitchy and dies before the Bloodbath has even begun. Sal dies just as fast, once he is found. He had hidden underground, in some sort of a burrow, and only left it when the Gamemakers had flooded it. An axe to the spine takes him out, and Effie dutifully sighs and says that _they shall do better next year, no hard feelings_ , and pretends that she finds the small twitches of his body on the ground humorous - she feels somewhat sick, actually, remembering the way he kept moving and kicking during his sleep, and takes a sip of champagne to hide it.

(Every year after, she spends the long months between Games going to parties, drinking and flirting and extracting promises that _Why of course Miss Trinket, I'd love to sponsor Twelve's tributes next year !_ and _How could I refuse miss Trinket, when you ask so prettily_ and she stops looking at far too many wigs in her closet and she prays they will never be come back in fashion again. What Effie has learnt from actually being an Escort: second chances don't exist. Fail once, and you're out.)

Katniss and Peeta teach her what love is. Katniss is compelling, in her own strange, remote way, and Peeta's natural charisma makes him just as charming. Their story is perfection, and Effie cries for them, and smiles at sponsors, drinks and parties and wakes between sheets not her own, tracks everyone in the Capitol who has ever owned her a favor, all for the sake of these children and their love. They are the same as the others, and different, with the way the hope and they dream and they shine, and it makes them beautiful. The Capitol adores them, of course, how could it not, and Effie goes so far as to hug Haymitch when they both get to come home, and hides beautiful plaits of pale blonde hair underneath her wigs.

They teach her the fear that comes with love, when she finds herself once again on the stage, scared of what is to happen for the first time of her life, so scared she can barely remember how to smile and make her voice its usual lilting thrill. It trembles despite her efforts, and Effie fears. For Katniss, for Haymitch, for Peeta who should never have volunteered (but Oh, the sponsors will _love_ it, she can already see how to best convince them to part with their money), for herself as well, because she has shown weakness and weakness is never a good thing. And so she gives them tokens, and wears golden wigs, and talks of team, because she loves them, they are hers, and she's not sure how she will cope if she loses them when they were supposed to live.

(It is a lesson they likely did not expect to teach her, and one she did not expect to learn. Love, and loyalty, and pride in one's acts rather than one's image. Love, and the fear that comes with it and consumes all. Haymitch had shown her the aftermath of it, but they... they show her how devastating the thought of loss truly is, how far one can go for others.)

The peacekeepers teach Effie so many lessons that she ends up losing track of them. They take her mere minutes after the television screen went black, without a word, without a care for her as they drag her with them and throw her in a cell. They take her wig, her clothes and her make-up, and she learns what it feels like to be exposed. They deprive her of food and drink and she learns that even these things she's always taken for granted are a privilege. They show her what happens to Cinna _after_ , and she learns that not even the dead are at peace. 

They shave her hair, they tear off her nails, they break her fingers and her toes only to badly set them in place, and she learns how long a minute can feel when all you can feel is pain. They take a knife to her lips and give her a grisly smile, one that extends all the way to her right cheekbone and is sewed in such a way that not even the best plastic surgeon could truly erase the scar, and she learns that she will always be theirs, no matter what happens. They hit her until her voice breaks from screaming so much, and she learns that she can't stand the sight and the smell of blood. They ask her questions they surely know by now she cannot answer, and she learns that words have no meaning. They enjoy her body, and she learns how to hide, deep deep deep in her mind, where they can't hurt her. They inject her with drugs, and she learns that she can't even trust her own mind, that she will never be safe from them.

The Rebels throw her in a new cell, dark and with walls so thick that sound barely reaches through, and Effie learns that being left alone can be just as painful as the rest. Time disappears as she spends more and more time in her mind and ignores the food unless cold hands force her to chew the hard tack and slap her when she bites, and she learns that not even her death will be hers. Haymitch and Plutarch negociate her freedom against one last time playing the escort, and she learns that she has no choice. She learns that her family is amongst those that stood trial and were executed, that her niece was killed when the Presidential Mansion was bombed, and Effie learns that there is always one more thing you can lose. 

(She has learnt that she is just a puppet, just a pawn, to be left on a shelf unless someone wishes to play with it, and so she plays her role. She smiles and moves and talks and does everything they expect of her, but her voice falls flat and her make-up and wigs and clothes feel wrong on her skin, and her gloves catch on the raw skin where nails should be and hurt, and her eyes stay empty though it all.)

(Years after, when she wakes with a scream stuck behind her teeth and trashes in the embrace of the arms around her, she will learn that she survived despite everything. She will watch children run and laugh without a care, and she will relearn how it feels to feel warm. She will talk to people in the street and find out that somewhere along the way, she has remembered that words do have meaning and value.)

(And someday, she will be able to tell the man who no longer has alcohol on his breath that she wants to eat mushroom stew rather than the leftover venison, and she will understand that, somewhere along the way, she has started to heal.)


End file.
